August 6th, 2010%
I enjoy learning how a character thinks through dialogue rather than narration.
In her introduction to Plato’s Five Great Dialogues, Louise R. Loomis summarizes Plato’s solution to how we can discover knowledge that is true:
Our sense impressions, taken alone, are misleading and superficial and tell us nothing about the real nature of the things around us. Common opinion, grounded as it is on sensation, hearsay, and habit, cannot be trusted as a guide to truth. But through our reason we may arrive at what may be rightfully called true knowledge and understanding. Through reason we may use our sense experiences and memories of past experiences as material for a process of analysis, classification, and synthesis that bit by bit builds up for us a pattern of permanent, invisible order behind the perplexing panorama which is all that our sense alone perceive.
This conversation from His Girl Friday or this conversation from Born Yesterday, which were both written as plays and then adapted for film, use character reasoning to communicate a true knowledge within the context of the story.
July 11th, 2010%
I used to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to balance the pursuit of knowledge and experience, particularly in high school and college. At that time, I wasn’t overly concerned with having money to pay bills or acquiring the things that cause bills. Plus, my time was very cheap to potential employers so given the option to have time or money, I often chose time.
Rather than reading John Stuart Mill’s concept of opportunity cost, which would have simplified things and prepared me to become a responsible adult, I found myself in a Plato/Aristotle/Socrates mash-up which clarified so many things so many times in so many ways. Eventually, I equated the modern day philosopher with a Jazz-age writer whose late-night conversations distilled truth without forgoing experience which was then formally translated into writing during a prolonged hang-over.
I wasn’t interested in trade-offs, but I was looking for role models. Besides, it sounded better to me than being part of the Algonquin Round Table. As a result, I went through a short phase where I was disappointed about being born in the seventies after everything cool seemed to happen for writing and everything cool started to happen for American film.
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